Inbound leads are exciting - they mean your messaging is working, your audience is interested, and your product is resonating.
But for early stage teams, qualifying those leads in real time is a massive challenge. You're juggling product, growth, onboarding, and firefighting - and if you don’t follow up fast, you risk losing that lead forever.
That was us at Nexcraft.
We were getting decent inbound volume through our landing page and contact forms, but our response time? Painfully slow. Our qualification process? Manual and inconsistent.
So we did what we always do: we used our own product to solve it.
Now, Nexcraft handles our inbound lead qualification automatically - with real-time enrichment, scoring, and instant Slack alerts.
🧨 The Problem: Bottlenecks in Lead Follow-Up
Before we automated this process, here’s what the lead flow looked like:
A user signed up to the platform or contacted us via email.
A team member would manually check for new users or open email, skim the message, and maybe look them up on LinkedIn.
If they looked legit, we’d reply - sometimes hours or even days later.
In some cases, we didn’t follow up at all (😬) because we missed the notification or deprioritized it.
We had no system, no SLA, and no qualification logic. We were just winging it.
And in the early days of a startup, every lead matters.
🎯 The Goal: Real-Time, Automated Lead Triage
We wanted to:
Immediately detect every inbound lead (from email or signup)
Enrich the lead with company and role info
Score the lead based on ICP fit
Route hot leads to Slack
Log everything in Notion for CRM lite tracking
🧠 The Setup: Nexcraft Lead Qualification Agent
Here’s the step-by-step flow we built:
Step 1: Monitor Gmail + Web Singups
Our flow checks every 5 minutes:
A dedicated Gmail inbox (
support@nex-craft.com)A new Signup event
Each time a new message/signup is detected, the flow grabs:
Email
Message
Timestamp
Step 2: Enrich Peoples
The flow calls the People Enrichment API to enrich the lead:
Name
Company
Role
Company size
Industry
Role title
LinkedIn profile (if found)
Step 3: Score the Lead
We built a simple scoring model based on our ICP:
Score ≥ 7 = Hot Lead 🔥
Score 4–6 = Warm
Score ≤ 3 = Cold
Step 4: Post to Slack with CTA
When a hot or warm lead comes in, the agent posts to #sales-leads:
Step 5: Log in Notion CRM
The flow also logs the lead to our Notion “Lead Tracker” with:
All metadata
Source
Date received
Assigned sales rep (if routed manually)
📈 Results: We Never Miss a Lead Now
⏱ Lead response time: down from hours to <1 minute
Even if no one is at their desk, Nexcraft responds immediately.
📬 Inbox to Slack visibility: 100%
No lead slips through the cracks. Every one gets triaged.
🏆 Better conversion
We’ve booked 1.5x more demo calls per week since deploying this agent — simply because we respond faster and more personally.
🧠 More data rich decisions
With enrichment, we know who’s worth pursuing - and how to prioritize them.
🧪 What We Learned
Lead scoring doesn’t need to be complex. A few high-signal attributes go a long way.
Even warm leads love fast replies. Speed = care.
The biggest lift came not from booking more demos, but not losing good ones.
We also learned to build a quiet fallback: cold leads still get logged but aren’t broadcasted to Slack - keeping noise down for the team.
⚙️ Nexcraft Prompt (Use This!)
“Monitor Gmail and signup events for new inbound leads. Enrich them using people enrichment API. Score the lead using defined ICP logic. If score ≥ 4, post to Slack with full context and book link. If score ≥ 7, send instant Gmail reply. Log all leads to Notion in CRM Tracker.”
🚀 Final Thought: Automate the First Touch
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Nexcraft ensures it’s fast, helpful, and on-brand — every single time.
We no longer scramble to chase leads. Our agent handles it.
You could do the same today. Just give it a prompt, connect your inbox, and go.
That’s what automation first sales looks like.
